The US invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003 was an ill-conceived and a doomed adventure, it was based on falsehoods and deceptions, which has led to terrible disasters and trepidations to the Iraqis as well as to the Americans. Now it is time now twelve years later to remember the lessons provided by this terrible adventure, and bring those responsible for this it to account for their actions. In 2003 the American military on orders from president bush and his accomplices , conducted operation Iraqi freedom, to free the Iraqis from the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein. After liberating the country, they would initiate a major reconstruction of the country, and the rejuvenation of its moribund institution and its infrastructure, but those were lies and deceptions, because today, 12 years after the invasion, the situation in Iraq is much worse than even under the worst days of Saddam. It is gripped by an incredible array of very serious problems, and while the Islamic State group is featured as “the issue”, there are major religious and ethnic conflicts, massive poverty and crime, and many others which are shaking the country’s foundations, and to make things even more complicated. As a result of the unfortunate adventure of the Bush administration, the United States itself is facing some very serious problems, but what defies one’s imagination is that those who perpetrated this mayhem have become either mute, or insist that the big picture justified their enterprise, and refusing to apologize, and are insisting on leaving judgment on it to history.

There has been and for a very long time, a good deal of co-operation between several Unites States intelligence agencies, and Iraqi exiles who were against the rule of Saddam Hussein, and then the US Congress came out into the open by approving the Iraq Liberation Act, which stated that US policy should seek to support efforts to remove the regime headed by Saddam Hussein. The act was signed by president Clinton on October 31 1998, five years later in March 19, 2003 his successor George W Bush invaded the country. The Bush administration legitimized the invasion by insisting that Saddam’s Iraq harbored weapons of mass destruction [WMD ] and co-operated with terrorist groups, including al-Qaeda, but these allegations which were made on many occasions were baseless, and nothing but an attempt to justify their adventure, which was doomed from its very beginning, but was helped by an atmosphere of fear which was generated by the media and some of the best known American think tanks with a constant barrage of false reports and statements, “there is a general suspicion that Saddam Hussein is working on a variety of terrorist contingency plans in case he finds it necessary to strike the United States”, and many other similarly inflammatory statements , these were welcomed by the Bush administration, and encouraged them to go ahead with their plans.

It is no secret that Saddam Hussein had for a very long time a very robust WMD program, but after he was kicked out of Kuwait, after his crazy invasion of Kuwait on March 2, 1990, the United Nations imposed harsh sanctions against Iraq, which was followed by the destruction the dictator’s arsenal of prohibited weapons, and ensured that no items could be allowed into the country, which could contribute to the country’s WMD program. The sanctions had also resulted in huge problems and misery to the population, and that was one more reason, which the Bush administration said it prompted them to go after Saddam. This was just another lie to justify their adventure, because the real reason or reasons which impelled President Bush to invade Iraq, will remain secret for a very long time, it was probably because the man who had the most important job in the world, was either terribly ignorant of the realities of the Iraqi situation, or that he was executing a secret agenda, which belonged to one or another Washington lobby or that of one of Americas important allies, but this is beside the point and academic, because in the end and as far as the unfortunate Iraqis and their country are concerned. There has been no improvement in their lives, there was no reconstruction of their country, or anything like that, the only thing they got, was a great disappointment which was personified in Paul Bremer.

Operation Iraqi freedom started on March 19, 2003, it lasted 20 days, it succeeded in toppling the regime of Saddam Hussein, but it was also supposed than when it would finish , the Americans would help the Iraqis begin the greatly needed reconstruction of their country, and the rejuvenation of its institutions, this was a very tall order, but lots of Iraqis believed in it, because when the Bush administration were planning their adventure in Iraq, they promised that after finishing the military phase they will immediately start a program akin to the Marshal plan through which America rebuilt western Europe after the end of the second world war and the fall of the Nazis, but the Iraqis were disappointed , they did not get a Marshall plan, the got ex-Ambassador Paul Bremer, a relatively Unknown diplomat who used to work in the antiterrorist office in the State Department , but was recently working in the Kissinger consultancy in New York, he was made administrator of liberated Iraq, he was directly responsible to a small number of very high administration officials in Washington to whom he reported and from whom he received his directives, he was extremely self-assured and arrogant , and was running occupied Iraq like the old English imperial viceroys in India , the viceroy was in Iraq for one year, his rule from the beginning was characterized by gross mistakes and blunders, and having been subservient to his higher-ups in Washington does not absolve him of responsibility , because his actions created an extremely fertile soil for the violence and destruction which was to dominate the situation in Iraq , which would cost the Americans themselves a tremendous amount of blood and treasure, thousands of dead and injured, and hundreds of billions of dollars.

On May 1, 2003, president Bush made a speech from onboard the aircraft carrier, USS Abraham Lincoln, which was returning from the Iraqi battle zone in which he declared that the mission has been accomplished. This implied that the recent war he had fought in Iraq has come to an end, inferring that it has been successful and victorious, but in fact the war was not finished and there was no victory, because the Americans had to remain there for the next eight years, until they officially withdrew from the country in December 2011. However the insurgency and various dimensions of the civil armed conflict continue, until this moment, with apparently no end to it in the foreseeable future, but I am not going to talk about what happened during those long dreadful years. The losses and the failures of that adventure are well known and well documented, but I am greatly worried, because the United States looks like going to re-enter the conflict once more, ignoring the terrible losses they suffered when they were actively involved in this conflict in the past, but some people seem to be unable to learn from lessons which history teaches.

President Obama will host the Iraqi Prime Minister, on Tuesday [April 14] at the White House and try to forge a strategy to snatch back the territory lost in Iraq to the so called Islamic state which has become a real threat to the country’s stability and security, since it burst on the scene with its conquest of Mosul, the second largest in the country, in June 2014. The Iraqi PM will be asking his war weary host for more help and support in what senior US officials admit will be a long fight to defeat the Islamic fanatics, nevertheless the White House signaled that the President who has deep political as well as security interests in Iraq’s future and that the Iraqis would succeed in their struggle with the Islamic State, would definitely oblige the Iraqi leader. The great worry is that this might be the beginning of the United States actively returning to the Iraqi mess, which has caused the Americans so much in blood and fortune, during the years that followed the Bush administration’s adventure in Iraq in 2003.

Najeeb Hanoudi

Friday April 17, 2015

Shelby twp. /MI

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